


at the end of the long way

by Silvereye



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hurt Thor (Marvel), Post-Canon, Post-Endgame, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 05:43:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18631996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvereye/pseuds/Silvereye
Summary: Sometime after the events of the Endgame, Steve Rogers finds wounded Thor on his doorstep.





	at the end of the long way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hoarmurath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoarmurath/gifts).



> Dear hoarmurath - Endgame did your fave extremely dirty and gave my fave an ending I can live with. I tried to fix this discrepancy.
> 
> Totally unbetaed, as hoarmurath _is_ my beta most of the time. Follows the interpretation where Steve going back created an offshot timeline. Contains mild descriptions of wounds and mild discussion of suicidal intent, please see end notes as necessary.

The autumn is crispy this year. The trees turn red early but the leaves don't drop for a long, long while. It's picture perfect. Steve would love it; his back doesn't and makes its displeasure known every morning. It usually settles down after he's done his stretches. Not too shabby for a centenarian.

There's a knock on his front door, early one morning. Bucky is never this early, Sam might be, but he knocks differently. Steve makes his way to the hallway. The shape behind the window is larger than Sam, slightly hunched over. Steve briefly thinks about stealth, attempting to get a look at the person before he – probably a he – sees him, and then just goes to open it. If it's a hostile, then so be it.

For a split second he does not recognize the man at all. Then he thinks: when did he become so _young_?

"Thor?" Steve says, half-disbelieving still.

Thor is hunched over, exactly as Steve thought, and pressing his right hand to his abdomen, low on the left side. His jacket is half-off, hanging from his left shoulder. He draws a breath and says: "I must have gotten confused and mistaken the house. I am sorry for disturbing you, kind sir."

"It is me, Thor. I'm Steve."

"What?" Thor says.

Steve has no chance to say anything else because Thor sways, attempts to catch himself on the door frame, misses and collapses on his shoulder. Steve goes down on one knee and swears. He's definitely not as spry as he once was. That is going to hurt for a while, but at least nothing's broken.

Thor seems unconscious. Steve doesn't know what he expected, but not that.

Oh. Well. That's… quite a lot of blood, soaking Thor's shirt and staining the lining of his jacket. He's not pressing his hand to the wound any more, but it seems to only bleed a little at this point.

Steve starts to call 911. Then he lowers the phone. From what he remembers, Thor was on Earth long enough to know what a hospital is. He hasn't gone there. He came to Steve. This must have been for a reason. If it wasn't, well, Steve can call 911 once Thor wakes up.

He fetches his first aid kit and gently draws Thor's shirt out of the way. The wound is a straight line, a bit ragged around at the ends, doesn't seem too deep. Fairly fresh, doesn't look infected. A surgeon would be much better at this, but Steve can fix it for now.

"It really is you," Thor says, when Steve is taping a bandage over the amateurishly-closed wound. Steve was not quite sure Thor was conscious. He's been too calm for a patient of an improvised surgery. "Did something go wrong on your last journey? Was Banner not able to reverse this?"

"Everything went as I intended." Steve gets the last bit of tape in place and sighs. His legs are half-dead. Getting up will hurt. Attempting to get Thor anywhere more comfortable than the carpet of Steve's hallway is pretty much out of the question. "What happened to you?"

"I have been wounded."

"I noticed. I'm not a doctor. Why come here?"

Thor is quiet for a long while. Steve puts his first aid kit back together, massages his legs and gets up, inch by inch. It's exactly as awful as he thought it'd be.

"I did not want to go to New Asgard. After that, you were the best choice. The one I trusted the most." Thor finally says, looking at Steve's carpet as if it's something interesting.

So terribly young, Steve thinks again. Then, everyone seems young these days.

"Alright," he says. "I have to tell you though, I can't to carry you anywhere."

"I will be able to get up in a few moments," Thor promises. Steve decides to leave it at that.

*

Getting up hurts and walking hurts more. Thor's entire side is on fire by the time he's lying on Steve's sofa. He grits his teeth and hopes Steve does not notice.

Steve returns from his kitchen with a glass of water and two small white oblong pills. So much for that.

"What happened?" he asks again, sitting on a chair by the sofa, after Thor has taken the medicine. It's strange, how Steve has changed so utterly and still the same in some regards. His face is so lined, his hands are veined and much thinner, but he smiles the same and his eyes are still the dark gray-blue of a winter evening on Midgard.

"We were investigating a ruined town for the artifacts Quill thought would be there. Teleportation, he said. The town was less abandoned than he thought. I was wounded in the fight, backed up to one of the artifacts and then I was on Midgard." There. It sounds quite reasonable when he tells it like that.

Steve hums, but doesn't say anything, thank the norns.

"I will not trouble you for long," Thor adds. "This will heal in a few days. I am sorry for the imposition."

"This is not an imposition," Steve says. Then he smiles, the same way he always has. "You did wrench my back something awful. I'm more fragile than you're used to, these days. But it'll heal."

"What did you do?" Thor asks.

Steve looks somewhere far away. "I put the Infinity Stones back. Then I took the long way back instead of the quick one."

" _Why?_ "

Steve hesitates and then says, quietly: "It hurt too much."

When it's obvious Thor is not going to say anything, Steve gets to his feet. "I'll fix us lunch."

*

Thor falls asleep after the lunch. He looks… better, perhaps. His hair and beard are shorter and he seems to have lost some of the weight. Steve is not certain. It has been almost eighty years for him, after all.

Steve draws a blanket over Thor's legs, in case the house is cold for him, too, and goes to the study. There's a notebook hidden in a compartment of the bookcase. It's slightly yellowed and the paper feels fragile in his hands. He sits down and opens it very carefully.

Steve was always going to have to come back here, to 2023, where there are people who did not take the long way. The thing is – the thing is that he missed the 20th century while he was in the 21st. It was a dull background ache sometimes and a sharp overwhelming pain at others, but it was always there, no matter how much he tried to move on. And yet, when he did go back he discovered he had remembered so many things wrong. Foods tasted differently and the epidemics still had teeth and everyone smoked. He had forgotten how much everything smelled of smoke. It seemed impossible.

So he wrote down everything he remembered from 2023 and then he hid it. No need to cause even more time paradoxes. He reads the notebook from cover to cover and then looks out of the window for a while. He _had_ forgotten. Time mends most everything, as long as it's given seven decades and a very determined subject, and he changed so many things that nearly nothing in the notebook happened in the past that he lived _this_ time.

Thor is awake when he goes to the living room again. He looks at Steve for a moment, then looks away, very deliberately.

"Is everything alright?" Steve asks. Easier than asking: what are you angry about?

"Everything is fine," Thor says curtly.

Unlikely. Steve sits beside the sofa again and smiles. "Well then. How have you been, other than being wounded?"

"Oh, you know. My entire family and most of my friends and half my former subjects are dead, I ruined the lives of an entire realm for five years in addition, my brother's corpse is still drifting somewhere in the void, work is not going well and the time _I_ went back in time I was forbidden to cause paradoxes," Thor says, mock-cheerfully. "So I left the time where everyone was still alive on the day my mother was going to die. The usual."

"I'm sorry," Steve says.

"Are you?"

"Yes."

"Kind of you," Thor says and falls silent.

None of them did right by Thor back then, did they? They were all so full of fractures, so barely able to support the friends who were nearby and picking up the phone that it was possible to forget Thor, remote and incommunicado in New Asgard. Steve remembers the way he himself only really spoke to Natasha and his support group. He just brushed up on what he felt, back then. Still. It was a failure.

"We should not have left you alone," he says.

"I am not angry about that," Thor says. Pauses. "Perhaps I am. I do not know. I am _enraged_ about you causing a time paradox when _no one else was allowed to_." Thunder rumbles, somewhere far off.

*

"I am not going to say I know what you're feeling," Steve says carefully.

"Good." Thor still feels like he just flayed his own hand, telling everything so openly, so easily, but perhaps it's something he should have done a long time ago. Speak to others about his pains, like Midgardians often do, about his feelings, not only his accomplishments like he's already living in a saga. Perhaps he wouldn't have so many unsaid words he's regretting now.

"I wanted to die, the day we came back from the time heist," Steve says, calmly, like this is a topic that can simply be discussed. His mouth quirks at the last words, then he falls serious again. "When me and Tony were getting the Tesseract, I saw Peggy and Howard. I had made myself forget how much I liked them, back in the war. No use on dwelling on the past, I thought. Seeing them brought it all back.

Well, then we were back in the future where they were dead. Natasha didn't return from Vormir. I knew we had the Infinity Stones, so we might at least restore Sam and Bucky, but I also knew I could lose them any moment. I had this knack for always surviving, had I not?

I did not want to do this any more. I could not do this any more. It was like standing at the end of a broken bridge and staring into the depths. This time, I had nothing."

"You _said_ you were not going to say you knew what I was feeling," Thor snaps. It's easier than thinking back to that day, to time heist.

"Yes. This is what I felt. I don't presume to think you felt the same."

"Everyone else had to keep going anyway, whether they wanted to or not." Thor wants to turn his back to Steve. Unfortunately that would mean putting pressure on his wound, so he settles for averting his eyes.

"I'm not going to say it wasn't selfish."

"Good."

"I went to Vormir. I… bargained with the person who shows the path there." Steve looks away. Thor is certain this version of the events is as close to what truly happened as his own story about the artefacts was: not a lie, but an elision of half the truth.

"The Sorcerer Supreme was not happy with me when I returned the Time Stone to her. She said something about how I had already sparked off so many alternate timelines within the true flow of time that braiding them together was getting to be tiresome."

"So you decided to spark off another."

"She gave me the idea, yes."

"So you have not just..." Thor waves his hand. "Hidden in the history I heard of for seventy years?"

"Oh, absolutely not."

Thor breathes in, out. Then he says: "Well, damn you anyway. Unless you have enough of those particles that I could depart for _my_ happy ending."

"I don't. I'm sorry."

Thor rolls onto his back and turns his head away. It's childish, perhaps, but he also cannot keep doing this any more.

*

Thor does not speak to him the entire rest of the day. He eats when Steve brings him dinner. He takes the painkillers. He lets Steve check his temperature. He still does not say one word. Steve does not mind. He's old enough to be patient.

Steve texts Sam in the evening before going to bed, _anything newsworthy today?_ and gets a response, _not rly, u holding up?_ Steve smiles and answers, _pretty good for a twice-senior citizen_. Sam sends a questionable emoticon.

Steve goes to sleep. He has to get up and go to the bathroom around three in the morning, as usual. He passes the living room on his way back and stills. Thor's breathing is laboured. When Steve creeps into the room, as much as he can creep, he realizes it's not quite that. Thor is dreaming, about nothing beautiful.

Steve stands beside the sofa, in a safe enough distance, and quietly calls Thor's name.

Thor shoots to his feet, hand outstretched like he's going to call Stormbreaker from wherever it is. Then he grunts in pain and slowly lays down again, hand over his wound.

"Did you hurt the stitches?" Steve asks. They're not stitches, he was not going to suture someone's wound if there were professionals in a ten-mile radius, but he keeps forgetting what the small adhesive things are called. Has kept forgetting ever since they were invented, so it's probably not dementia.

"No," Thor says. "I don't think so. It can wait until morning."

Steve sits on the edge of the sofa right beside Thor. "I am awake anyway."

"It can wait until morning," Thor repeats. He does not seem angry at Steve right now, so Steve remains where he is.

After five minutes or so, Thor's breathing changes again. Steve does not see his face in the thin glow of the streetlights outside, but he knows the sound well enough. Thor is crying, quietly, like he thinks this might remain unnoticed.

Steve doesn't say anything. Instead, he places his hand between Thor's shoulder blades and starts rubbing small circles. Peggy used to do this when he had nightmares in those early years, and later Steve himself did it every time someone in his family woke him by having a nightmare. There were enough of those, the grown-ups dreaming of death and cold and killing, the children dreaming about monsters under the bed, their dreams no less weighty simply because they were about unreal horrors.

Thor falls asleep again after a while. Steve waits until his breathing is entirely even and then goes back to bed.

*

In the morning, Steve drifts around the house, bringing Thor breakfast, gently checking the wound and changing the bandage and utterly not saying anything about what happened at night. Thor is glad. Crying still feels like a weakness and he hates to be weak, no matter how familiar this should be by now.

Time passes. Steve goes out to a café at noon, after Thor has promised that he can be left alone. Thor gets to his feet a few minutes after Steve is gone. It hurts, of course, like coals on his side, but he's careful enough to not injure himself further. He slowly makes his way to the table on the opposite side of the room. The pictures on it have been very hard to see from his position on the sofa.

There are ten pictures in smart little frames and even more in a book entirely dedicated to them that lies on the shelf under the table. Most of the pictures depict people Thor doesn't know, of course, but he recognizes Steve. There is a woman who must be Peggy and their probable children. There is… another Steve? There is Bucky, but younger, and Natasha, younger yet. A couple that has to be Tony's parents, judging by the facial features. And so many others, people Thor could not recognize. A perfect world.

Midgard's technology is nothing to speak of, compared to what Asgard used to be, but at least they have these pictures. Thor has nothing at all.

He wants to sweep them off the table and stomp on them, but he's not petty enough to break guest laws. This is Steve's perfect little world. He can have it.

"Most of them are dead even in the past that I lived," Steve says quietly. Thor did not notice when Steve returned, didn't hear the front door or the footsteps. He stiffens, puts the picture down, takes a few steps back.

"Is that so," he says, inanely.

"I _am_ one hundred and seventeen years old," Steve says, a shadow of a smile in his voice. "The serum didn't keep me young, but it has kept me in an extremely good condition. Peggy made it to ninety-five, Bucky a little further. One of my kids was still alive when I crossed over. Most of the grandkids." He drifts off, wistful, and then says, "And Natasha, of course."

"So you still lost most of the people for whose sake you went back," Thor says.

Steve sits down somewhere. "Yes. But we had a life first, this time."

Thor sighs. The world is feeling heavy again. He badly wants a drink. He wants to never have a drink again. He lies down on the sofa and thinks about nothing.

A clock ticks somewhere, loud in the silence. Thor has gotten used to them, on his travels to Midgard. They have always been comforting, a reminder that no matter what is happening, somewhere there is a Midgardian device measuring order the way norns measure lives, only thrice as friendly and much less dangerous.

"Do you want to tell me about them?" Steve asks after a while. "Your family, or your friends. You don't have to."

So many dead. Thor does not know where to start. Only three people survive of the Asgardian nobility: him and Lady Sif and Queen Brunnhildr. Commoners fared slightly better, but half the people lost is no victory. He sighs and starts with his mother. His parents, his erstwhile sister, the Warriors Three, Heimdall, Loki. Always Loki, in the end.

He cries again. Steve listens quietly, hands him a handkerchief and makes no fuss at all.

*

"I have been thinking about what the Sorcerer Supreme said," Steve says the next morning, changing the bandage. Thor was right. The wound is already scarred over, a bright tender pink line on his side.

"About alternate timelines?"

"About braiding them together."

"What do you mean?" Thor asks.

Steve hasn't been afraid for a very long time. The older he got the less sense fear made. He is afraid now, afraid of making a mess of what he is going to say and causing more pain to Thor. He finishes with the bandage and turns away.

"This is not the world in which I grew old," he says. "I only half understand how I got here, but the current Sorcerer Supreme could probably teach the same trick to you." How to say the next part? How to give Thor hope without cracking him wide open?

Thor sits up and stares at Steve. "Where do I have to go?" he asks. "Asgard was destroyed."

"During the time heist," Steve starts and smiles. This term will never be not amusing. "During the time heist me, Tony, Bruce and Scott went back to 2012. This is where we got the Mind and Time Stones, but not the Tesseract. We messed this one up and Loki took it."

"But you returned the stones," Thor says, face still as a stone, closed against any glimmer of false hope. Steve's heart breaks a little.

"We took the Tesseract from 1970 and this is where I returned it. I never went back to 2012. I think this timeline still exists, braided together with all the others I sparked."

Thor is quiet for a while. "It still would not be the Loki whose death I witnessed."

"No," Steve says. "I cannot help you with that." It's hard to believe Loki could die. Steve half-believes Loki faked it again, was ashed and only recently returned to life. It would seem very much like Thor's little brother. But this speculation really would be a false hope, like as not.

"And there probably is a Thor in that world."

"Me and Steven were able to figure it all out."

Thor thinks for a while and then he hugs Steve, sudden and fierce. Steve smiles and hugs him back, never mind the creak his back gave off.

"Thank you," Thor whispers.

"You're welcome."

*

Thor leaves on the morning of the fourth day. Steve stands on his porch and watches Thor walk down the street. He seems taller, walking with purpose. Steve is only a little sad to watch him go. It was nice having someone else in the house.

He hopes Thor finds what he's looking for.

**Author's Note:**

> Mild descriptions of wounds - Thor is wounded, Steve assesses the situation and fixes it as well as he can. I would not tag it as gore.
> 
> Mild discussion of suicidal intent - Steve felt suicidal returning from the time heist. There's a paragraph that could be interpreted as him actually attempting something, but it's vague and unconfirmed.


End file.
